


The Guilt of Innocent Blood

by DWatson



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23947621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWatson/pseuds/DWatson
Summary: Jonas and Martha, at the end of the world.
Relationships: Jonas Kahnwald/Martha Nielsen
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40





	The Guilt of Innocent Blood

There was so much blood, more than he thought the human body could possibly hold. It was everywhere, soaking her shirt, pooling on the floor, gushing from her mouth.

Drying on his hands.

Jonas wept until his shirt was drenched and his eyes were dry. And for the first time in his life, he truly, _truly_ , wished he was dead. Not as a tribute to a cause, not so that someone else could live, but because he just couldn’t take any more—the pain, the loss, the guilt, the _madness_ of it all.

He was _sixteen_ and barely knew how to cook a plate of scrambled eggs when his entire life went to hell in a handbasket.

He got up. He clutched his head to keep from reeling. He paced up and down the hallway. _Death is incomprehensible_ , _but you can learn to make peace with it,_ his older self had told him. The useless, jaded one who hadn’t bothered to show up and stop this, even though he knew it was coming. Was that really who he would become? Would he let go of Martha long before becoming the wrinkled monster that killed her without batting an eyelash?

He knelt back down beside her. Her hand was already cold. The hand that felt so warm and loving when she had pressed against his pounding heart the first and last time they made love. The gesture had filled him with more tenderness than he knew what to do with. He had felt as though his heart would burst in his chest. Through all the long months he had spent away from home, learning anything and everything Claudia could teach him, from shooting a sniper to splitting an atom, her touch lingered on his skin like a permanent brand. It had kept him going, even as he plunged headlong into erasing his own existence. He didn’t understand himself. He couldn’t articulate what he was hoping for. What he was expecting. If he ever succeeded in his plans, he’d be gone anyway. And still, he dreamt that, one day, they would be able to pick up where they left off.

Jonas was never any good with words. Always too slow, too vague, too afraid of saying the wrong thing, and, sometimes, even more afraid of saying the right one. Now that there was no one left to say them to, he could hardly swallow past the words that swelled in his throat. What if those words were what Martha was asking for when she grabbed, blindly, at any part of him she could hold on to? She couldn’t have thought he would leave her.

Could she?

He had sworn to himself that, if she still wanted him, knowing what they were to each other, he would never leave her again. Even if they really _were_ wrong. He would love her as long as he existed in this goddamn hell hole of a town where everything was wrong anyway. Maybe that should have been the last thing she heard in this life, even if it didn’t matter anymore. 

Intentions mattered. He had to believe they did. He had _intended_ to save his father, too.

Tears spilled from his eyes again. Whether that was grief for everything he had lost, or guilt for all he hadn’t yet become, he couldn’t tell. Sometimes, he felt as though all he ever did was cry, and fuck things up, and then cry some more.

The Sun went out. The floor started shaking beneath him. Jonas had no exit strategy. That he couldn’t die was already a well-established fact. He figured he might as well wait for whatever deus ex machina would swoop in and save him from this disaster he helped create.

His legs wouldn’t have carried him far, anyway.

Martha’s face lay pale in a halo of blood-soaked hair. This, too, was his creation. Maybe if he hadn’t lingered, waiting for her benediction. Maybe if he hadn’t wasted precious time indulging in a kiss. Maybe if he had put himself between her and the gun.

Maybe. A tiny pebble pitched in just the right way could send ripples through the ocean of time, and change everything. At least that’s what Claudia said before she went off to get killed, too.

The thing was, Jonas could believe his older self would want to end the world. It was insane, and evil, and divorced from everything he stood for, but it was not, as a concept, outside the scope of his comprehension. Not after everything he had been through. What he could not have conceived of was that he ever could, or would, hurt Martha.

The walls clattered around him. In the distance, he could hear glass shatter in cascades.

He hadn't even tried to stop Adam from leaving. His parting words barely registered over the sound of Martha drawing her terminal breath. But one thing he understood very clearly, looking into those vacant, unfeeling eyes: as long as he held on to his pain, however many twisted branches it wrenched through his heart, he would still be Jonas.

He embraced it like a long lost lover, and promised Martha he would set things right.


End file.
